


Away From The Face of The Sun

by Sanguineheroine



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes - fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jealousy, M/M, Marriage, Mary Is A Good Wife, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanguineheroine/pseuds/Sanguineheroine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s an old proverb ‘cold hands, warm heart’ but in Holmes nothing could be further from the truth - Holmes’s heart is more akin to his eyes; both were schooled early in life to reveal nothing.  I did not find it, in the beginning at least, to be problematic; if anything it was a blessing to me.   War had left me with little enough kindness in my heart and what I had I hoarded jealously; I would not have given it away to a near stranger simply in gratitude for physical pleasure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Away From The Face of The Sun

_Every winter,_  
When the great sun has turned his face away,  
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,  
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,  
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -  
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.  
 **\- Charles Kingsley**

 

My wife’s hands are warm.

It wasn’t the first thing I noticed about her, but it was the first thing that made her important.

Holmes’s hands are cold, you see. Undeniably graceful; lean and elegant and always a better barometer of his thoughts and moods than his well trained actor’s lips or those icy quicksilver eyes, but cold all the same.

There’s an old proverb ‘cold hands, warm heart’ but in Holmes nothing could be further from the truth - Holmes’s heart is more akin to his eyes; both were schooled early in life to reveal nothing. I did not find it, in the beginning at least, to be problematic; if anything it was a blessing to me. War had left me with little enough kindness in my heart and what I had I hoarded jealously; I would not have given it away to a near stranger simply in gratitude for physical pleasure.

And it was pleasurable, there can be no doubt about that.

That is perhaps where the problem began.

I am no green youth; I am wise in the many ways that two people may please each other. Never, though, have I known the single-minded intensity with which Holmes makes love; he gives no quarter, asking everything and offering no less in return. When he touches me, I am consumed entirely.

Separation from him in the aftermath of our desire became painful; over time Holmes came to possess so much of me that when he rose to dress (as he inevitably did straight away) I mourned the part of myself that went with him. I tried every trick I knew to keep him with me, entwined together in the haven of my sheets but he would have none, pulling away from my clutching fingers and twining limbs with determinedly distant eyes and a particularly stubborn set of his jaw that I never saw but in those moments.

We never spoke of it. If I am honest, my hesitancy was born of cowardice; I did not care to hear his rejection in plain speech. Holmes’s reluctance was, I believe, due to his distaste for strong emotions – soft feelings are an anathema to him, an unnecessary complication to the delicate mechanisms of his mind and spirit.

Once I knew this much of him, I knew also that even for me there was no hope. I could have what I would of his body, his lips, and his coldly perfect hands, but I would never have his heart.

I am not, and I would not ever wish to be the kind of man who would be satisfied with so little. I could have borne, perhaps, such limited friendship and comradeship as Holmes was capable of offering me but the memory between us of slick naked flesh and hoarse cries in the dark made any decent and common relationship such as other men enjoy impossible.

There is no heat with Mary; no slow licking flames at the sight of her square governess’s hands or the plump curve of her calf. Love with her is a careful, congenial affair; it is timid tickling strokes of her warm fingers and muttered apologies when my own grip too tight or thrust too ungently against delicate flesh. Holmes would laugh to see his bold and greedy bed mate so reduced, so well mannered and so considerate.

One evening last winter, Mary returned late from her afternoon tea. London was benighted by early winter dark and an icy wind was blowing, howling in the chimney and chilling me even though the fire in my study was stoked high.

When she came to me her hands and face were pale and cold and when she kissed me in her customarily absent-minded greeting the first touch of those frozen fingers on my jaw filled me with blazing hunger such as I had not known since those last frantic nights at Baker Street. When I seized her wrist and pulled her close she let out a frightened whimper and I am ashamed to say that her breathless plea for mercy only further inflamed me.

I pushed up her skirt and bent her over the edge of the desk. She fought me like a wild thing, bucking her hips and biting at my forearms but soon enough I mastered her, my sweating palms forcing her still-chilled fingers flat against the blotter and my sturdy leg parting her soft thighs. She was willing enough though, wet and hot and when I closed my eyes she was only a pliant vessel that smelled of melted snow and damp wool. With the scent of iodine and chloroform rising from my own clothes it was little work of imagination to see myself back in my little bedroom at the top of the stairs, with Holmes writhing beneath me and the filthy fast-beating heart of London outside the narrow windows.

In the broken moments after my glory I tried to apologise, but she hushed me with a single warming finger against my lips. The maid brought our supper and we ate in silence, Mary watching me as I watched the vanishing rooftops through the misted panes.

A week later I slipped silently into our bedroom, late home from a house call, thinking to find my wife fast asleep and was shocked to find her awake and waiting. She was knelt on the chaise by the open window, hands resting on the sill. She rose when I approached and rather than embrace me, leaned to extinguish the lamp. The next I knew of her was a cold, firm hand inside my waistcoat, unbuttoning my shirt and coming to rest over my heart.

Perhaps I can, after all, be satisfied with only a little.


End file.
